The Vision of Sir Launfal eBook

The fashion of Cambridge was then literary. Now
the fashion of Cambridge runs to social problems, but
then we were interested in literature. We read
Byron and Shelley and Keats, and we began to read
Tennyson and Browning. I first heard of Tennyson
from Lowell, who had borrowed from Mr. Emerson the
little first volume of Tennyson. We actually
passed about Tennyson’s poems in manuscript.
Carlyle’s essays were being printed at the time,
and his French Revolution. In such a community—­not
two hundred and fifty students all told,—­literary
effort was, as I say, the fashion, and literary men,
among whom Lowell was recognized from the very first,
were special favorites. Indeed, there was that
in him which made him a favorite everywhere.”

Lowell was but fifteen years old when he entered college
in the class which graduated in 1838. He was
a reader, as so many of his fellows were, and the
letters which he wrote shortly after leaving college
show how intent he had been on making acquaintance
with the best things in literature. He began
also to scribble verse, and he wrote both poems and
essays for college magazines. His class chose
him their poet for Class Day, and he wrote his poem;
but he was careless about conforming to college regulations
respecting attendance at morning prayers; and for
this was suspended from college the last term of his
last year, and not allowed to come back to read his
poem. “I have heard in later years,”
says Dr. Hale, “what I did not know then, that
he rode down from Concord in a canvas-covered wagon,
and peeped out through the chinks of the wagon to
see the dancing around the tree. I fancy he received
one or two visits from his friends in the wagon; but
in those times it would have been treason to speak
of this.” He was sent to Concord for his
rustication, and so passed a few weeks of his youth
amongst scenes dear to every lover of American letters.

III.

Firstventure.

After his graduation he set about the study of law,
and for a short time even was a clerk in a counting-room;
but his bent was strongly toward literature.
There was at that time no magazine of commanding importance
in America, and young men were given to starting magazines
with enthusiasm and very little other capital.
Such a one was the Boston Miscellany, launched
by Nathan Hale, Lowell’s college friend, and
for this Lowell wrote gaily. It lived a year,
and shortly after Lowell himself, with Robert Carter,
essayed The Pioneer in 1843. It lived
just three months; but in that time printed contributions
by Lowell, Hawthorne, Whittier, Story, Poe, and Dr.
Parsons,—­a group which it would be hard
to match in any of the little magazines that hop across
the world’s path to-day. Lowell had already
collected, in 1841, the poems which he had written
and sometimes contributed to periodicals into a volume
entitled A Year’s Life; but he retained